


Twists of Fate

by linndechir



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Getting Together, M/M, Near Death, Pining, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:27:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26312626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: The other half of a Spartan's soul is Sparta, Nikolaos had told him once. But even long after he's stopped caring what a Spartan should or shouldn't do, Alexios doesn't expect he'll ever meet the man whose wounds have left countless scars on his skin.
Relationships: Alexios/Brasidas (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 142
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	Twists of Fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> Halfway through writing this fic, I realised that maybe when people say "soulmates share scars", they don't necessarily mean "soulmates share the wounds that lead to those scars"? And then I thought that you probably wouldn't mind, dear tdc. So have a slightly body horror-ish soulmate AU, with a side of "the Greek gods are real and Alexios is a demi-god" if you squint, and a plot that hinges on this being an AU in which Brasidas wears armour that covers his shoulder/upper arm a bit more than in canon. I hope you enjoy it! :D

Alexios could not remember a time when he didn’t have any scars.

His very first one had been with him his whole life – he had no memory of getting it, although his mother told him how shocked she’d been to find him with his small face covered in blood. As far as Alexios could remember, it had always been there, since the very first time he’d touched his face or seen his reflection. A cut high on his cheekbone, quite close to the eye, but fairly shallow. It grew over the years, of course, but in time it also faded to a thin white line.

It was one of the few marks of his childhood that stayed with him for the rest of his life, along with a deep, painful lash over his back, presumably from a whip or a switch, and a sword cut on his outer thigh. Most of the others faded quickly – all those countless bruises and aches that accompanied him throughout his childhood. Maybe the pain of his own training, first at his father’s hands and then in the _agoge_ , had never struck him as all that bad because he’d been in pain for most of his early life.

“He must be a tireless warrior,” Myrrine had told him when she’d consoled him over the wound on his thigh. Alexios had been six and trying his best not to cry. Spartans didn’t sob and whimper in pain over a small injury, and back then he’d still very much cared what a Spartan did or didn’t do.

“Will I ever meet him?” Alexios had asked her then, for the first and last time, but Myrrine had shaken her head and explained why he, in all likelihood, wouldn’t. Why most people didn’t, when they were often bonded to someone who lived far away.

Sparta did not put much stock in these old legends anyway. Every Spartan belonged to the state and was expected to marry for the state, and the last thing Sparta would want was for her sons and daughters to go out into the world to find whatever foreigner or barbarian or slave the gods had shackled them to in a cruel twist of the fates. The other half of every Spartan’s soul was Sparta, Nikolaos had told Alexios one day – Nikolaos who did not carry a single scar on his body he hadn’t earned himself, whether because his soul was unbound, or bound to someone who’d died very young, or to someone weak no Spartan could ever respect, but Nikolaos neither knew nor cared to.

There were exceptions, of course, those rare cases of two Spartans being bound together. It was seen as an exceptional sign of favour from Aphrodite herself, as with Leonidas and Gorgo – the king and queen had flaunted their matching scars proudly, and in the _agoge_ Alexios heard stories that Leonidas’ countless arrow wounds on Gorgo’s body never stopped bleeding after her husband’s death at the Thermopylae. Myrrine had assured Alexios that those tales were nonsense, but that the wounds that had killed Gorgo’s king and husband had indeed never truly stopped aching until her death.

But most men were not Leonidas of Sparta, chosen by the gods for a grand fate in more ways than one. Not even his grandson.

So Alexios bore the pain of those early years and accepted that it was a test from the gods to make him stronger, nothing else. He thought he passed it, too, for it became much less of a burden in the last year before – before the Cult came after his family. Fewer bruises, fewer cuts, fewer nights when he woke up with ice-cold fingers and toes or with his feet aching from long marches. In the year before his father threw him off Mount Taygetos, almost all his wounds were his own, earned during his training at the _agoge_.

It wasn’t until many years later that he wondered what it must have felt like for _him_ , when Alexios picked up his battered body from a fall nobody should have survived. 

*

On Kephallonia, people cared even less about such matters than they did in Sparta. A small backwater barely anyone ever left, where grand talk of a single soul ripped in half by the gods and banished into two separate bodies that might never meet was considered gullible nonsense that didn’t belong anywhere but in old myths and love songs. Life was hard enough without unearned wounds forming on one’s body, and to be plagued by them often was clearly a curse or a punishment. Alexios learnt to keep his own “curse” to himself, and it had become far easier by then. He wondered just how much older this warrior his soul was entwined with was, if maybe his fighting days were already behind him. Or maybe he wasn’t a warrior at all – maybe he’d been a slave with a cruel master during Alexios’ childhood, and now he’d either gained his freedom or been bought by someone kinder. Alexios started talking to those occasional wounds on his body the way he did to Ikaros – absent-mindedly, sometimes a little annoyed, cursing at this distant other half of him when he got Alexios injured at inconvenient moments. 

On those days when the idea of spending his life on Kephallonia was unbearable, he liked to imagine what this stranger was like – this man he knew nothing about but the wounds on his body. On some days he pictured one of those tall, blond barbarians from the North Alexios had heard about, on others a black-eyed Egyptian, again on others a Greek _misthios_ like himself, roaming the Aegaen in the eternal pursuit of men who needed other men killed and were willing to pay for it. Alexios’ dreams never went further than a handsome stranger smouldering at him (and occasionally said handsome stranger sharing his bed, if it was a more _exciting_ dream). It was a childish fantasy to pass bored evenings, and by the time he left the island he’d grown up on, he barely ever wasted a thought on it. 

Even once he heard strange stories on his travels of places where parents would carve intricate scars into their children’s skin and send them out into the world to find whoever the gods intended for them, Alexios merely shrugged. His mother had probably had the right of it – most men never met their mysterious stranger, and even if they did, what would be the point? A few scars in common didn’t seem like they would matter all that much.

Certainly not once Alexios met his father again, once he realised that his little sister was alive and needed his help, once he found the first clues of what had happened to his _mater_. What mattered was reuniting his family and stopping the Cult, and he had more important things to think about than the occasional scratch that showed up on his skin.

*

Korinth was a city of earthly pleasures, and even those who searched for intimacy and tenderness did not expect to find true love here, whatever that would mean. Alexios was looking for his mater, and for a brute of a criminal in league with the Cult. A Spartan general was the last person whose acquaintance he’d expected to make.

Alexios was used to fighting alone, and often actually bothered by having someone by his side. But he and Brasidas, before he even knew the man’s name was Brasidas, moved around each other as if they’d known each other their whole lives, as if they’d grown up fighting side by side. As he stepped underneath Brasidas’ spear or whirled around him in the instinctive certainty that Brasidas would protect his flank, Alexios wondered if this was what a Spartan phalanx felt like – not in its fighting style, of course, but in that strange feeling of intimacy that came from knowing a man’s every next move.

Between the setting sun and the burning warehouse behind them, there was an almost golden tint to Brasidas’ tanned skin when they shook the blood off their spears and introduced themselves. He smiled more than any Spartan Alexios had ever met, and while Alexios knew that should have made him _more_ suspicious and not less so, he didn’t even hesitate to tell Brasidas what he was after.

As they clasped hands, Alexios noticed a scar on Brasidas’ cheekbone, as faded as Alexios’, but not quite as long. He noticed because it was hard not to notice a scar on someone’s face, and as he looked, Brasidas caught him looking and gave him a wry smile. As if the same thought had crossed their minds in that moment, only to be dismissed immediately. What warrior _didn’t_ have a scar on his face? Alexios had met several men with a similar one in Korinth alone.

But Brasidas was handsome and charming and surprisingly kind when Alexios told him who he was, and for all that Alexios tried to remain cautious, he couldn’t help but feel that he could trust him. Or at least that he didn’t have to distrust him entirely. He accepted Brasidas’ suggestion of dealing with the Monger quietly (partly because he was fascinated by the idea that any Spartan would choose subtlety over open violence), and he accepted Brasidas’ invitation to come eat with him and his men a few times. It was comfortable, in a way Alexios rarely felt when he was very much an outsider wherever he went.

If they’d had a chance to be alone again, Alexios would have done something about Brasidas’ easy smiles and the casual touches, the way he clasped Alexios’ shoulder or patted his back. If they’d been alone, Alexios would have crowded him against the nearest wall until he could see that teasing twinkle in Brasidas’ eyes from up close, and he would have kissed him and asked Brasidas to show him just what Spartan men did with each other after they’d fought side by side. He had so much to do, so many enemies to fight, so many tasks to accomplish to find his family – he could use every bit of pleasure and rest he could get on the way, and few things improved his mood as much as a handsome man in his bed.

But they weren’t alone – there was always someone nearby, whether Brasidas’ soldiers or Anthousa and her people. And so all they did was exchange looks and smiles, and Brasidas winked at him like he knew exactly what Alexios was thinking about, and nothing ever came from it.

When the Monger was dead in the ground and Alexios left Korinth, a strange sense of regret filled him. All he’d missed out on was a tryst with a stranger – Brasidas had not been the first man Alexios had desired to no avail, and he wouldn’t be the last one either. And yet turning his back on him ached somewhere deep in is bones, in ways Alexios couldn’t explain away with the fact that he liked Brasidas, that Brasidas had seemed trustworthy, that Brasidas had been willing to help him. He couldn’t explain it, and so he resolved not to dwell on it.

*

Years and a few scars later – though mostly his own these days, with his life being far more dangerous than most other people’s – they met again, on Spartan ground this time. Years later and Alexios barely felt like a day had passed when Brasidas laughed and teased him about saving his life back in that warehouse, as if they’d only been drinking and sharing stories the night before. He was still handsome, still clever, and Alexios still desperately wanted to get his hands into Brasidas’ hair and underneath his tunic and maybe then he would simply forget about him the way he forgot about all the other men who had distracted him for a night on his travels.

But again they were far too rarely alone – Alexios had missed his _mater_ far too long to resent her presence even now, when every minute with her felt like a gift, but he did resent the soldiers, the informants in Arcadia, the mercenaries hunting him at all times and making it far too dangerous to let down his guard.

Weeks passed, of lingering touches, of Brasidas laughing at every dirty joke Alexios made and paying every teasing remark back with one of his own, and once or twice Alexios almost shoved him to the ground and kissed him and damn the consequences. He only held back because he thought Brasidas would be disappointed, and that was when he realised that Brasidas’ opinion mattered, in a way that Lykaon’s or Alkibiades’ or anyone else’s never had. Far worse than liking Brasidas was that he wanted Brasidas to like him back.

Upon their return to Sparta, Alexios already steeled himself for that same feeling of regret as when he’d left Korinth. Another missed chance, and maybe this would turn out to be the last one he got. They were at war, after all, and a Spartan general led his men from the front of the phalanx. Alexios knew all too well that every time he bid Brasidas farewell could be the last time he saw him alive.

The night before Alexios planned to sail for Messenia, after he’d taken a walk through the unfamiliar city he’d grown up in, he found Brasidas waiting by the house of Myrrine’s old friend who let them stay with her. That inviting smile on Brasidas’ face, that mischievous expression in his eyes, and Alexios was struck by just how relieved he’d been to see him one last time before leaving again.

“There you are,” Brasidas said and clasped Alexios’ shoulder through the thick leather of the armour he had not so recently acquired. Even so his touch felt unspeakably warm, and Alexios was glad when Brasidas’ hand lingered. “I was hoping to catch you before you left.”

“And what were you planning to do to me, once you’d caught me?” Alexios asked. Brasidas laughed and stepped closer still.

“What do you think I usually do to my captives?” he said, and the next thing Alexios knew he was being led away, through streets and around corners Brasidas clearly knew as well as the back of his hand. It almost made Alexios feel a little caught, and he relished the unexpected rush of it, the heat of Brasidas’ hand on his arm and the way Brasidas smiled when Alexios told him he couldn’t wait to find out.

He wasn’t entirely sure where it was Brasidas brought them – closer to the edge of the city, near a few houses that seemed to have been abandoned a decade or two ago. Not quite ruins, but the kind of derelict that made it clear nobody lived here anymore. Before he could ask, Brasidas shoved him against one of the buildings and kissed him.

It wasn’t the kind of tentative, hesitant first kiss so many men went for, still testing the waters to see if they were welcome. No, Brasidas seemed to have not a single doubt in his mind that he was welcome, that Alexios had been waiting for this for long enough that he would have been embarrassed if it had been anyone else. He finally got his fingers into Brasidas’ hair, pulling on the braid as he bit his bottom lip and yanked him closer. 

No, Brasidas wasn’t shy about this at all, nor inexperienced, and apparently every bit as impatient as Alexios felt – it only occurred to him then that maybe Brasidas had regretted their last parting just as much as him. He bit Brasidas’ lips again, drew a deep moan from his throat, and then Brasidas kissed his way down to Alexios’ neck, the scratch of his beard sending shivers down Alexios’ spine.

When Alexios pulled on his braid again, he barely expected Brasidas to react to it, but Brasidas smiled up at him and went to his knees in a movement as graceful as if he made a habit of kneeling for all his friends. His hands were warm on Alexios’ thighs when they slipped underneath his tunic.

“So is that what you do with all your captives? Seduce them?” Alexios asked breathlessly. He ran his fingers over Brasidas’ bearded cheek, smiled when Brasidas moved into his touch. For a moment his thumb caught on that scar on Brasidas’ cheek.

“Only with the handsome ones who keep running off,” Brasidas said. He tucked up Alexios’ tunic and made quick work of the cloth underneath, and Alexios was very grateful of the wall behind him when Brasidas started kissing and nuzzling his thigh. He nosed at the sensitive skin, licked his way up to Alexios’ balls and nuzzled them for a few seconds before his lips slid back down again. His grip on Alexios’ thighs was firm, keeping him as much in place as Alexios did with his hand in Brasidas’ hair.

“For good reasons,” Alexios said, not that any reason in the world seemed good enough right now to deny himself this. Wherever he had to go in the morning, there was nowhere else in the world he’d rather be now. “But I am glad you chased me down this time.”

Brasidas only smiled in reply before he kissed Alexios’ thighs again. For a moment his fingers caught on that old scar on the outside of Alexios’ leg – a white line on tanned skin, criss-crossed at the bottom with a much fresher scar Alexios had received from a bandit only last year, somewhere near Athens. Brasidas retraced it with his thumb, so very slowly that Alexios pulled on his hair in impatient frustration, and then a second time with the tip of his tongue.

Maybe if Alexios had been able to think about anything but how much he wanted to feel that tongue on his cock, he might have wondered about the way Brasidas lingered there, but instead all he did was grab Brasidas’ chin and touch his lips.

“You didn’t chase me down only to tease me, did you?” he asked, and regretted the question almost immediately. Brasidas could be playful, in a way most Spartans seemed to consider a frivolous waste of time – Alexios shouldn’t have put it past him to be an awful tease all night, not the way Brasidas kissed his thumb, slow and lingering. But he seemed to take pity on Alexios, or maybe he simply liked the way Alexios pulled him closer again by his braid, the way he shoved his thumb between Brasidas’ lips until he opened his mouth. Either way he was as eager as any man Alexios had ever met when he finally wrapped his lips around Alexios’ cock, so eager he choked himself with it and still didn’t stop. 

He sucked Alexios off until Alexios came apart with something far closer to a whimper than he liked, and then Brasidas pressed right back up against him for another kiss. Alexios licked his own come from Brasidas’ lips while he got his hands underneath his tunic – with nothing else in the way between his fingers and Brasidas’ cock, because Brasidas was clearly a man who planned ahead. He was big, so big Alexios greedily wanted him inside him and couldn’t even decide if he’d want to use his mouth first or simply bend over for him. But he did neither in the end because it would have meant not kissing him anymore, and Brasidas seemed perfectly happy with Alexios’ hand, gasping into the kisses and still refusing to stop, until Alexios’ jaw almost felt a little sore from it, his lips bitten until they were swollen. 

It was as dizzying as fighting by Brasidas’ side had been. And yet even in the thrill of finally doing something he’d yearned for so long, it felt oddly easy. Alexios rarely slept with the same man twice, and he was used to his trysts coming with a little awkwardness – someone being too rough or too gentle for the other’s taste, or not quite knowing how a stranger liked being touched – but just as Brasidas’ every move in battle had complemented Alexios’ perfectly, so did the way he touched him now. He smiled against Alexios’ lips with a fondness that made Alexios ache as much as he had that last day in Korinth when he’d left Brasidas behind, smiled and groaned Alexios’ name as he came over his fingers, still fully dressed in his armour and making a thorough mess of his tunic.

They never made it out of their clothes that night. Alexios wouldn’t have minded fumbling around for a little while and then going again, but Brasidas mumbled something about both of them having an early morning ahead of them and pulled away.

As they adjusted their clothes and tried to make themselves look respectable enough to walk home, Brasidas hesitated. Alexios had never before seen him quite so uncertain – Brasidas seemed like a man who always knew what to do, who was so certain of his place in the world that he had no room left for hesitation. It was one of the things that drew Alexios to him, that quiet, certain calm. Few things in Alexios’ world made sense anymore these days, the Cult and the minotaur and other monsters and frankly some of the things he could do and knew he very much shouldn’t be able to do, but Brasidas had a steadiness to him that never failed to ground Alexios.

“What is it?” Alexios asked, even as he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. Again Brasidas hesitated, but then he seemed to come to a decision. His frown disappeared and gave way to the usual smile, but this time the gesture almost felt distant when he squeezed Alexios’ shoulder.

“Good luck with Testikles. He’s an … interesting man,” he said and grinned, clearly knowing exactly how worrying that sounded. A bit more seriously he added, “I hope to be there when you return and take back your place here in Sparta. You belong home.”

“It doesn’t feel very much like home anymore.” Alexios looked away – he hadn’t been prepared for their conversation to go that way, and he didn’t want to talk about this to Brasidas any more than he did to his mother.

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t. But maybe it will in time.” Brasidas patted his upper arm lightly, but even when he lowered his hand, he lingered in Alexios’ space. He still looked as if there was more on his mind, but Alexios certainly didn’t feel like talking about how little he knew where _home_ even was – if it was Kephallonia or the house he’d grown up in, if that house could be anything at all without Kassandra in it, or without his _pater_ , if he could even bear to share a home again with the man who’d thrown him off a cliff. All those questions were problems for the future, and until he’d have to deal with them, he’d hopefully find easier problems that he could simply solve with his spear.

Fortunately Brasidas didn’t seem to expect a reply. He wished Alexios safe travels and disappeared into the night, leaving Alexios behind between a dozen empty houses in a city he only half remembered.

*

He should have realised after Pylos. Or maybe he should have realised much earlier than that – when that night in Sparta had done nothing to make him forget about Brasidas, or rather to remember him with that same superficial fondness with which he remembered all those other men he’d fucked once and whom he had absolutely no desire to see ever again. Instead he’d only ached for him more – and not only when all he thought about was the things they hadn’t done yet that night. He imagined Brasidas fucking him when he bent over for a bearded young soldier up in Arkadia the next time he was there, or that he was sucking Brasidas’ cock and not that of some Athenian soldier. But it was always more than only that, a yearning for more than only Brasidas’ body against his. He didn’t like it, so he didn’t think about it.

And after Pylos … after Pylos a hundred things happened at once, things that were more important than his pointless obsession with a Spartan general who no doubt had more important people in his life than a _misthios_ he’d met a handful of times. 

Alexios had suffered a fair amount of wounds in the battle against his sister, countless marks on his arms and his legs, enough that even he hadn’t been quite healed when he’d woken up in that Athenian prison. But he should have realised that the wound in his thigh was far deeper than it had any right to be. Kassandra hadn’t pushed her sword through _his_ thigh. She had pushed it through Brasidas’, right before she’d thrown him aside and left him motionless in the dust … What use was it to dwell on such thoughts about a dead man?

By the time he found out that Brasidas had survived the Battle of Pylos, Alexios was back on his feet and quite happy to forget about his new collection of scars and just how he’d acquired them. And Brasidas didn’t say a word about any of it when they met in Amphipolis, so whatever Alexios had thought he’d felt or seen, lying feverish on a cold prison floor while thinking Brasidas was dead, it had merely been his imagination playing tricks on him.

He managed to hold on to that conviction right until Kassandra slammed Brasidas’ own spear through his chest and Alexios screamed in pain. He’d been so close, almost close enough to stop Brasidas from facing her alone, almost close enough to throw himself between them. He was right there when her strength ripped through Brasidas’ breastplate like it was the softest fabric, when he felt his own bones and flesh tear underneath his still intact armour. He choked on his own blood in the same moment that Brasidas convulsed and coughed, blood flowing from his lips and through his beard. Alexios didn’t only feel Brasidas’ pain in that moment, but his fear, that instinctive fear of death that even a Spartan’s yearning for a beautiful death in battle couldn’t defeat in those last moments.

Even as Alexios’ own body started knitting itself back together (and he’d never before been so unbearably _aware_ of it, of his body doing something that Brasidas’ was very much not), he could still feel Brasidas struggling for breath, gasping and choking as his lungs inexorably filled with blood. Alexios felt every agonising second of his death even as he struggled to his feet to run after Kleon, to stop him at least if he hadn’t managed to stop Kassandra.

Later that day, when the battle came to an end, Alexios was surprised not to find Brasidas among the corpses on the blood-soaked earth. He’d never been more glad that Brasidas was more than just a common soldier, because when he started asking about him, it didn’t take long until someone could tell him where their commander had been taken. The knot in Alexios’ throat hurt more than the persisting wound in his chest as he walked through the tent of injured and dying men until he found Brasidas – his armour stripped off him, his wounds tended to, but he was unconscious and so pale that Alexios would have mistaken him for a corpse if not for his rattling breath.

They were all there on display then, all those countless scars Alexios had never seen in the years he’d known Brasidas. The long scratches on his right arm – from one of Alexios’ first real fights back on Kephallonia. The deep scar on his left shoulder – where the Cyclops had almost chopped Alexios’ arm off. The ugly knotted scar on his stomach – where one of the Kretan Bull’s horns had taken Alexios’ feet right off the ground. But also a scar on Brasidas’ hip that matched Alexios’ own – a story Alexios didn’t know, a battle he hadn’t fought, he’d simply woken up one morning and found his hip covered in blood. And then there were those two old scars on Brasidas’ thigh – that very old one Brasidas had suffered when Alexios had been just a boy, and Alexios’ own scar crossing it at the tail end. Those twin scars Brasidas’ fingers had lingered on for so long that night in Sparta.

Alexios almost startled himself with his cry of fury then, though certainly not as much as the medics in the tent who were tending to other soldiers’ wounds. Brasidas had known for _years_ and he hadn’t said a word, when he could have explained just why Alexios had never been able to get him off his mind, why no man’s touch had ever felt half as good as the joy of seeing Brasidas smile at him again. He hadn’t said anything, and now he lay here dying because for all the marks their bodies shared, he didn’t have the same resilience Alexios had, that same strength that everyone told him must have been a gift from the gods, some sign of who his father truly was when Myrrine kept wrapping herself in silence. If Aphrodite had bound him and Brasidas together, as the myths claimed, it must have been in some cruel jest aimed at whoever had bestowed Alexios’ strength on him. They’d both merely been made toys in some divine quarrel or prank, drawn to each other and fated to be ripped apart before they ever had a chance to be together.

Alexios couldn’t even bring himself to mumble an apology to the medics. He leant down to run his fingers through Brasidas’ sweat-slick hair and winced at the clamminess of his skin. He felt as helpless as every time Kassandra escaped him to run back to the Cult – he knew he had to go after her again, and soon, but for once he didn’t know how to face her. It hadn’t been her fault, what they had done to her, and Alexios had been determined to forgive her for every wrong she’d committed since he’d found out that she was still alive.

But if Brasidas died … would Alexios’ still bleeding chest ache for the rest of his life, as Gorgo’s arrow wounds had? Would he spend his whole life yearning for a man he’d never spent more than a few days at a time with, a man he’d barely known and who’d felt so familiar since the first moment they’d laid eyes on each other? Would he be able to forgive Kassandra if she’d truly taken Brasidas from him?

Alexios didn’t pray much. Barnabas chided him for it, how rarely he sacrificed a goat or a pig before a battle or a long sea voyage, how little he seemed to care for the gods’ favour. Alexios had been at the gods’ whims his entire life, and he’d never been under the impression that they cared all that much about what anyone wanted or asked for.

But as he stepped out of the tent, leaving the screams and moans of the wounded behind him, he saw Ikaros soaring through the sky, screeching loudly and heading North instead of West towards the docks and the Adrestia. Alexios sighed and followed him, all the way to the town’s temple of Zeus. There was nobody there at this hour, and Ikaros landed comfortably on Alexios’ arm as he stepped inside.

“I didn’t bring you a sacrifice,” Alexios said in the general direction of the looming marble statue. Then a thought occurred to him, and he reached under his armour to scoop up some of the blood that was still slowly oozing from the wound in his chest. It wasn’t all that deep anymore, not on Alexios. He could breathe easily again, even if every breath still hurt. It was nothing compared to the rattling he’d heard from Brasidas in that tent that only stank of death.

There was still some dried blood in one of the basins people let their sacrificial animals bleed out into, and Alexios smeared his own blood carelessly onto it. It was certainly nothing the priests would approve of, but Alexios didn’t think that decorum was what the gods cared about most.

“I don’t know if any of those stories people tell about me are true,” he said, trying to fight down the feeling that he was just a sad, pathetic fool, clinging to his last hope that he wouldn’t lose Brasidas without ever truly having him. And still he almost stopped and left again, but Ikaros kept staring at him and picked at a strap of Alexios’ armour when he tried to turn around.

“But there must be _some_ reason why I’m not lying right beside Brasidas and dying with him.” Alexios swallowed. It had never been a comfortable thought, and certainly not one he liked to voice. Oh, he joked about it plenty, every time some poor peasant he’d helped insisted that Alexios had been sent by the gods, every time someone admired his skill in battle, when Alexios had always enjoyed compliments. But he knew his myths well enough to be quite sure that nobody should want to court the attention of the gods, and that to be born with it was almost always a curse. Except he’d already been cursed so thoroughly by the Cult, so talking to a statue that probably wasn’t listening could hardly make his fate worse.

Ikaros picked at his arm, pulled at the leather that covered his shoulder. If that first battle wound that had almost ripped his arm off hadn’t made him take to protecting his shoulders so much, would Brasidas have noticed those distinctive scars earlier? Would he have said something then, back in Korinth? Alexios sighed.

“I don’t know if it has anything to do with you, personally, or with … I don’t know. If I have any divine favours left, maybe after a decade of Brasidas getting my wounds from every time I fight something I probably shouldn’t, he could also get the same perks as me. Just this once.” Alexios looked down at his bloody fingers. He’d lost quite a bit of blood since Brasidas had fallen, enough that he should have been unconscious, but instead he barely felt light-headed.

The marble of the statue was cold and unmoving, the skies were quiet, and Alexios was nothing but a desperate man begging not to lose someone he cared for, the way countless men did all over the world every single day, praying to countless deaf gods in different manners.

“ _Malákas_ , this is stupid, Ikaros. What did I think would happen? A meaningful thunderbolt and then I’ll find Brasidas waiting for me by the Adrestia?” Alexios scoffed and turned, and this time Ikaros didn’t try to stop him. But he stayed sitting on Alexios’ arm for a little longer before he took to the skies again, circling over him as Alexios returned to his ship.

He’d spent his life thinking he’d never meet the man the gods had bound him to, and he hadn’t even been sure if he believed those stories that everyone finally met the other half of their soul in the Underworld. It had never seemed particularly important. And when he’d met Brasidas and craved his company more than anyone else’s before him, he hadn’t assumed it had anything to do with _fate_. So many men loved someone fate hadn’t picked for them, so why shouldn’t he? Not that he’d been able to think of it as love until he’d _felt_ Brasidas almost die, the sensation of having Brasidas’ soul ripped away from his so visceral that it had crushed every last attempt to tell himself that they were merely friends who liked to tease each other and had spent one not even particularly long night together years ago.

But to realise that he’d been given something so rare, to meet the person some twist of fate had bound to him, only to lose them the very moment he realised what it was? It seemed unnecessarily cruel, even compared to all the cruelty fate had already inflicted on him.

He cut Barnabas off when he climbed on deck, only told him curtly that they had to return to Sparta. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about the battle, to rejoice about Kleon’s death or even to share his concerns about what Kassandra might do next. He wanted to go home, to see his _mater_ , and to wait for the news of Brasidas’ death.

*

It never came. The war ended in a tentative peace and Alexios hunted down the last few remains of the Cult. Then he returned to Sparta and finally convinced Kassandra to come home, and still Brasidas lived. Alexios’ _pater_ had come back to Sparta as well, and if Alexios could forgive Kassandra, he realised he could also forgive Nikolaos. He had a harder time forgiving Stentor for being a prick, but he supposed they were family now and would get used to each other in time. And still all the news he got was that Brasidas was recovering in Amphipolis, his injuries too grave for the long journey home.

Alexios still wasn’t quite sure if he believed it. His own wounds had healed ten times over, leaving an angry red scar on his chest. He kept it hidden, especially from Kassandra, who would be far too likely to make the connection to a man she’d almost killed not too long ago. He still wasn’t sure Brasidas would ever return, and if he did – well, then Alexios still didn’t know what any of this _meant_. The gods were fickle, after all. If they bound people together who would never even meet, why wouldn’t they connect people who had no future together? Whoever had decided that shared scars had anything to do with _love_?

After all, Brasidas was still Spartan in ways that Alexios never would be, citizenship or not. And Alexios remembered very well what Nikolaos had taught him all those years ago.

In the end it was winter by the time Brasidas finally returned to Sparta. Alexios watched him arrive from afar, greeted by Archidamos himself and several of the ephors, and surrounded by dozens of other Spartans – both friends and relatives, it seemed, and others who simply came to see the man who’d been responsible for their victory at Amphipolis. Even if the war was over, of course Sparta prided herself on ending it with a victory. Alexios saw Nikolaos, too. His _pater_ had asked if Alexios didn’t want to come along to greet his friend, and Alexios had deflected with a weak excuse. He knew nobody would notice or care, but the idea of facing Brasidas with too many eyes on them did not sit well with him. So he sat perched up high on a nearby temple and watched – the way Brasidas moved, still more slowly than he used to, but without needing any aid. How he nodded gravely when he was congratulated and honoured, and then turned to laugh just as easily when his friends pulled him into an embrace. 

He was _beloved_. Alexios had always known that Brasidas was popular among his men, and of course highly respected, but he hadn’t realised just how honoured he truly was in Sparta. A man who’d given his whole life to serve her, and who’d done so better than almost anyone else. And of all people it was Alexios the gods had chosen for him.

Brasidas spent the evening at a feast in his honour that ran late enough that he looked exhausted by the time he finally stumbled home, and the next day he was once again surrounded by friends and brothers-in-arms who wanted to catch up with him and exchange countless stories from the last months of the war. Again it wasn’t until late in the evening that he finally returned home, but this time he didn’t look quite as worn out. Alexios decided he’d avoided him long enough.

“Could you bear one more well-wisher welcoming you back home?” he asked just as Brasidas was about to step into his home, and the surprised smile that spread over his features filled Alexios with as much warmth as seeing him turn with at least some semblance of his old strength and grace.

“Absolutely not,” Brasidas said and reached out to grasp Alexios’ forearm. “But I have been wondering where you were hiding this whole time. Myrrine told me you were still in Sparta.”

“I don’t have that many good reasons to leave anymore.” 

For a moment Brasidas looked at him rather strangely, and then he pulled Alexios inside. The house was small and quite well tended to considering that it had been empty for a few months, but then no Spartan would take care of such matters themselves. And while Alexios had been to enough places with slaves, he’d never been to one that had quite as many as Sparta did. 

“You look well,” Alexios said, to say something. Brasidas glanced at him, then kept walking, through the large common room into a much smaller room with a bed. Alexios swallowed as he watched Brasidas sit down on it.

“I still tire as quickly as an old man. And after weeks of lying in bed, even the weight of my armour and shield are hard to carry,” Brasidas confessed and stretched out his legs. He was, of course, wearing armour. “But considering that I should by all rights be dead, I won’t complain.”

“I suppose your injuries weren’t as bad as they looked,” Alexios said, as if he hadn’t seen the spear split Brasidas’ chest open. Brasidas was still looking at him so intensely, not all that different from the way he had that night all those years ago. Like there were too many things to say and not enough ways to say them. At least now Alexios understood how he felt. He sank to his knees and started undoing the clasps of Brasidas’ sandals, pulled them carefully off his feet.

“Oh, they were. The medics were certain that I was going to die. I think I scared them all half to death when I woke up.” Brasidas smiled, but when Alexios didn’t react, his expression grew more serious. “Show me your chest, Alexios.”

Alexios knew it was his last moment to – to run away from this, from having to face any of it. He could have made a lewd joke, and then told Brasidas he needed rest, or maybe he could have sucked him off without either of them undressing, the way Brasidas had the last time. And then tomorrow morning he could be on the Adrestia and not return to Sparta until Brasidas had moved on from all this – the Cult was done with, but there were still a few small remnants of it here and there, and even without it a _misthios_ was never out of work.

He didn’t want to do any of those things. He was so very tired of walking away from Brasidas. So he sat back on his heels and unclasped his armour, just as he’d been told. He set it on the ground and threw his tunic over it, and only then, in nothing but his sandals and his loincloth, did he glance up at Brasidas. There was something like quiet awe in Brasidas’ eyes, and a tenderness Alexios didn’t know what to do with. Brasidas brushed his fingers over the still fresh scar on Alexios’ chest, then covered it with his palm.

“How long did it take to heal?” he asked.

“A few days.” Alexios shrugged, embarrassed. It didn’t seem right, to admit that when Brasidas had spent weeks in bed, feverish and with one foot on Charon’s boat. “Longer than my wounds usually do.”

Brasidas laughed, half in disbelief and half in amazement. He undid his own armour then, the movements slow and careful, but at least he didn’t wince in pain. When he pulled his tunic over his head, Alexios saw that he was thinner than he used to be – his thick muscles whittled down after weeks of inactivity, but there was still a wiry strength in him that made Alexios hope he would truly return to his old self in time.

The scar on Brasidas’ chest looked far worse than Alexios’. It was fresher, like the last bits of scab had only peeled off recently. The new skin still looked thin and sensitive, but all those small differences couldn’t hide that the shape of the scar was identical to Alexios’. 

“I used to think of this as a … a nuisance more than a curse. Wounds that appeared out of nowhere and served no purpose, that weakened me when Sparta needed me,” Brasidas said thoughtfully. He rubbed his thumb over the scar tissue on Alexios’ chest. “But now I think without this bond between us I never would have left that battlefield alive.”

Alexios thought of Ikaros, of his own blood as a meagre sacrifice, of stupid words spoken out of desperation.

“You don’t know that,” he said.

“No, of course not. Some things we’re not meant to understand and the gods don’t make a habit of explaining themselves to mortals.” Again Brasidas stroked the scar, then cupped Alexios’ chin to make him look up. Brasidas’ eyes were so warm, and Alexios had missed the way their gaze kept lingering on him, like there was nobody else Brasidas would rather look at. “But it is the best explanation I can think of, so that’s what I choose to believe.”

He touched the scar on Alexios’ cheek then, that very first one, faded and old and a good deal longer than the matching one on Brasidas’ cheek.

“This one doesn’t look like yours,” Alexios said softly.

“No. I wondered about that. But then I remembered how young I was when I got it … which means you couldn’t have been old enough to walk yet. Of course your scar grew, even more so than mine.”

Alexios turned his head until he could kiss Brasidas’ palm, and suddenly he felt quite stupid for not thinking of that himself. Of course the scar didn’t look the same anymore as when he’d received it. He wasn’t even entirely sure how much older than him Brasidas was.

“You were in the _agoge_ back then, right?” he asked.

“Yes. Those years can’t have been any more pleasant for you than they were for me.” Brasidas ran his fingers through Alexios’ hair, not quite pulling on it, but Alexios still shifted closer on his knees until his chest bumped against Brasidas’ legs.

“I did wonder why I stopped being in pain all the time. I thought maybe you’d grown too old to fight, but really you’d just grown too old to get beaten every day.” Alexios laughed and Brasidas joined in, and Alexios had missed that, too, when they were apart. How easy it was to smile around Brasidas.

Alexios sobered up when his gaze fell on the crossed scars on Brasidas’ bare thigh. This one too looked a little different – Brasidas’ scar was longer on Alexios’ thigh as well, since Alexios had grown since then, but the constellation of those two scars was far too unique to be overlooked. Of course Brasidas had noticed them. And when Alexios touched the scars carefully, they even felt the same as the ones on his own body.

“I wasn’t sure until I saw these,” Brasidas said and covered Alexios’ hand with his own. “I suspected before. When we met …”

Alexios looked up in surprise, but Brasidas merely shrugged.

“You must have forgotten. Sparta has enough legends about brothers-in-arms whose souls were linked. That they fight as one, as if a single soul guided two sword arms. I’ve even seen it a few times in my life. We had two men like that in my _syssition_ when I had only just joined. They died together a few years later, but I saw them fight a few times before that.”

“You suspected then and you didn’t say anything?” Alexios felt a fraction of that same anger he had at Brasidas’ sick bed, though it was far less strong with Brasidas sitting right in front of him, healed and safe and looking at him like that. “And years later, when you noticed these, you also didn’t say a word! Did it bother you, that it was me? Some _misthios_ and not a legendary Spartan warrior?” 

“Gods, Alexios!” Brasidas looked actually taken aback for a moment. He took Alexios’ face between his hands, leant down until their foreheads touched, just a brief caress before he pulled back enough to meet his eyes again. “Of course not. For one, I never thought for a moment that you were ‘some _misthios_ ’.”

Their lips almost brushed then, Alexios still bracing himself with one hand on Brasidas’ thigh and leaning into his every touch.

“But what would you have had me say? What would it have changed? I didn’t want to keep you near me because of any divine whims and games, and I don’t believe that was why you wanted to see me either. But I had a war to fight, and you … I believe I still only understand half the things you had to do. So why burden you with that knowledge, when you had your mother to find, and your sister? You couldn’t have stayed with me, any more than I could have gone with you.”

Alexios breathed out slowly, relaxed into the firm pressure of Brasidas’ fingers against his scalp. They’d never touched quite like this and yet it felt so familiar, as familiar as the shape of Brasidas’ scars and the taste of his lips when Alexios finally kissed him. Brasidas was right, of course, as he so often was. Alexios had been frustrated enough by his yearning for Brasidas without knowing how entwined their fates were, and yet he still felt as if they had wasted years. No, they couldn’t have been together, but maybe Alexios would have tried harder to find him, to spend a few stolen nights by his side now and then instead of trying so desperately to forget him.

When he broke the kiss, he sat up so he could meet Brasidas’ eyes again. Brasidas looked thin and somewhat pale, but he was still Spartan. A general, a war hero, an admired strategist, and brilliant enough to to offer Sparta as much in peace as he did in war. Even if he never quite regained his old strength, even if a glorious death in battle was out of reach for him now, he could still serve Sparta in so many ways, and Alexios had no doubt that he would.

“What now?” he asked, trying for a light-hearted tone and failing entirely. Brasidas cocked his head to the side as if he didn’t quite understand the question.

“Your family is safe, isn’t it? Myrrine says you have defeated this Cult you were hunting. She and Nikolaos seem to be speaking to each other again, and it doesn’t look like your sister is planning to leave any time soon. They’re all staying in Sparta. I thought you would as well.”

“I actually hadn’t thought much further than this.” Alexios laughed, a little shakily. “I haven’t stayed in any place for long since I left Kephallonia, though I suppose I could now. But what about you? My _pater_ always said that every Spartan only belongs to Sparta.”

“And yet I’ve never seen a man more in love with any woman than your _pater_ used to be with Myrrine.” Brasidas smiled, but his tone was serious. “I was married, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve done my duty to Sparta in that regard. As for all the others … if you don’t plan on spending the next ten years gallivanting through all of Greece again, I don’t see why I couldn’t be both yours and Sparta’s.”

A few years ago, Alexios still would have asked him if Brasidas even wanted to. He might still have wondered if he himself wanted to stay here, with him. The gods were hardly known for giving mortals things that actually made them happy, after all.

But he’d felt Brasidas die, and it had been the most unbearable thought in the world to lose him. He’d felt him die, and then Brasidas had fought his way back into this world – Alexios didn’t know if it was truly because of him, because of this connection between them he couldn’t explain, let alone because of one hopeless little prayer and whichever god might favour Alexios. But he knew that Brasidas _thought_ he’d returned for him, and that was all the answer Alexios needed.

“I could use a break from gallivanting,” Alexios finally said. He rose from the floor so he could climb into Brasidas’ lap instead, wrapping his arms and legs around him and breathing another kiss onto his lips. “Someone has to help you train so you can get back on your feet. And I spent a long time wanting to come home.”

“I always told you you would, ever since we met,” Brasidas said. He smiled against Alexios’ lips, slid his hand to the long scars on Alexios’ right arm just as Alexios mirrored the movement. Every inch of Brasidas’ body felt strangely familiar, even though there were still so many places Alexios had never touched yet. This time he didn’t plan on going anywhere until he’d changed that. He wouldn’t leave, and he wouldn’t let Brasidas leave either.

“Also, I would appreciate it if you could avoid getting pierced by arrows, mauled and burnt for a little while,” Brasidas added with a wink.

Alexios squirmed closer to him, grinding down onto Brasidas’ lap before he pushed him onto his back to straddle him properly. Brasidas was already hard against him, and as Alexios retraced the scar on his chest once again, he decided that he knew exactly where he wanted to start with him.

“I think we can manage that,” he said. “You’ll just have to keep me right here.”

Maybe Brasidas would have to neglect his duties to Sparta for just a few days. Just until Alexios had caught up on the past few years and done all the things he should have done a long time ago at least once. As for everything that came after that … for the very first time in years, Alexios was almost certain that his fate didn’t only have more trials and burdens in store for him.


End file.
